May is American Wetlands Month, a month to appreciate and enjoy the wonders of wetlands. The Department of Natural Resources encourages residents to experience this amazing native ecosystem by visiting one of Michigan’s finest wetlands – the Maple River State Game Area.
Nestled along both sides of U.S. 127 in southern Gratiot County, Maple River State Game Area includes farm fields, woodlands, grasslands and cattail marshes. It is a popular birding and wildlife viewing destination in the spring and summer.
The diversity of habitats at Maple River offers wildlife enthusiasts a wide variety of viewing opportunities. Visitors can go to flooded cornfields for dabbling ducks like Northern shovelers, Northern pintails and green-winged teal or check out the larger ponds and marshes for diving ducks like ring-necked ducks, hooded mergansers and ruddy ducks. Herons and egrets are common marsh visitors, as well as bald eagles, ospreys, grebes, coots, muskrats and moorhens. Prothonotary warblers may be found nesting in wooded swamps.
May is a great time to visit the forests of Maple River for migrating warblers and other songbirds. Look for yellow-rumped, black-throated green, blackburnian and chestnut-sided warblers in the treetops. The fields of Maple River also are good places to observe white-tailed deer, Northern harriers, red foxes, coyotes, ring-necked pheasants and horned larks.
Extensive construction projects at Maple River – including new pumping stations, improved water control structures and dike repairs – will be finishing up this spring to improve wetland habitat and waterfowl hunting and viewing opportunities. These projects are funded in part by hunters’ license dollars.
May is American Wetlands Month, a month to appreciate and enjoy the wonders of wetlands. The Department of Natural Resources encourages residents to experience this amazing native ecosystem by visiting one of Michigan’s finest wetlands – the Maple River State Game Area. 
